Curio's, Curiosities and Artifacts

[Direwolf]

HI Frosty, yes I am familar with the history it is exteremly interesting. George, I too saw the Great lakes copper in the European /old world bronze age. I saw it on a program on the History channel perhaps 5 years ago? I do not have any references other than that. You are right about interesting things in the glacial till. I have always been interested in rocks/minerals. Spent most of my life as a civil engineer was in rock quarries and gravel pits site excavations on a daily basis found lots of interesting minerals , nothing that was very valuable though. 

[George N. M.]

I was a Wyoming geologist for years until the bottom fell out of oil, gas, and minerals in the early '80s.  I didn't want to go to work for 7-11 or Burger King.  I never wanted to say "Do you want fries with that?" professionally.  So, I went back to the University of Wyoming and went to law school.  I still describe myself as a "recovering" geologist.  It is one day at a time and you are never completely cured.  Whenever I feel a compulsion to hit a rock with a hammer or make a map I call someone up and they talk me out of it.  ("Hi! My name is George and I'm a geologist.  I've gone 27 days without hitting a rock with a hammer."  Applause)

Thomas Powers had a similar history but he went into IT rather than the law.

My cousin's husband still works at a limestone quarry near Mankato, MN.

I'm somewhat skeptical of dramatic claims made on the History Channel.  They are not known for their academic rigor.  I don't discount early old-new world contact but large scale export of copper from the new world to the old needs some serious and persuasive evidence.  Besides chemical signatures (and I may question how distinct they are) there would need to be evidence of export from the UP to the east coast of North America and loading and trading for old world goods on the east coast.  I'm not saying any of this is impossible but i would like to see more evidence than a History Channel program.

I am aware of the Old Copper Culture in the Upper Midwest and that copper artifacts from the UP show up in Hopewell contexts ("Mound Builders").

GNM

[Frosty]

Here are a couple, the title of the first one will google all sorts of hits in a search.

https://grahamhancock.com/wakefieldjs1/

This one is interesting and discusses the missing copper. https://ancientamerica.com/missing-prehistoric-michigans-half-billion-pounds-of-copper/

Dang, I'm sorting as fast as I can but there's a LOT of really interesting ancient American copper history and more. It's really easy to get lost.

I'm finding lots of articles about copper ingots on ancient sea wrecks but haven't run across the one with the spectral analysis showing Michigan copper. I also seem to recall some in ancient Egyptian artefacts. I must've spent a week binge reading on the subject a few years ago but my bookmarked sites are on a dead computer. <sigh>

Frosty The Lucky.

[Nobody Special]

Trying to figure out which of the Old World/New World connections are legit and which are bogus will drive you nuts. I want to believe a lot of them, like some of the medieval mystery men appearances in Europe thought to be Native Americans, or the theory of Basque cod fisherman hitting the Grand Banks in America well before Columbus got to town.

We know that there was a lot more traffic than you learned with "In 1492, Columbus sailed the oceans blue". But which ones? The evidence is hard to find and to prove and speculation is rampant. Things like the fake Viking runestones don't help either. How cool would it be though, if this one was true? My family thought I was nuts when we went to a science museum in N. Georgia and I spent way too long looking at a small boulder size piece of float copper that had made its way down there.

[George N. M.]

I find the Hancock article to be pretty conclusory and he makes some grand assumptions.  This is a bit like the idea that all pyramids around the world must be the result of Egytptian influence.

The other factiod of 500 million pounds of copper being "missing" also takes some pretty major assumptions.  To say that X amount is unaccounted for means that you have to know how much was there to begin with and how much is still in situ which is pretty much impossible.  500 million pounds of copper would make a cube about 96 feet square or about 10 stories tall.  That is a LOT of metal to move around even over centuries or millenia.

What really makes me skeptical of major trans-Atlantic trade or transport of large amounts of copper is the lack of Old World artifacts on this side of the pond.  A project of that size would have taken a lot of man power and if they were from the other side of the water we would be seeing, for example, Minoan or Phonecian or Egyptian pottery and other artifacts turning up in North America.  Yes, the Hancock article showed some artifacts which were proported to be of Old World origin but we don't have any information about their provenance.

And if copper was mined and smelted into ingots which could be transported some of it would have been lost in transportation between the midwest and the east coast.  None of these hypothetical ingots have been found as far as I know, not to mention remains of camps or storage sites.

To expain a sudden "flood" of copper in the mid-Old World Bronze age Occam's Razor would point towards some unknown old world source area before trying to look to a now lost trans-Atlantic copper route.

I remain skeptical without more convincing hard evidence.

GNM

 

[Frosty]

That level of skepticism is right in my lane and I can't disagree with any of it.

Except my voices keep saying. Evidence is, Minoan and Phonecian cultures took and kept slaves. The Odyssey has the hero happily cruising and raiding as he went and enslaving folks to collect and work for him when convenient. A common "reason" for a little pillaging is the failure of the residents to offer sufficient host gifts. Poor Odysseus's ships were always too short of provisions and plunder to offer visitor gifts.

I find it all to easy to imagine small settlements of ancient European types who "supervised" the native labor in mining and smelting ore that was transported on the great lakes to the St. Lawrence river or Mississippi via one of the hundreds of canoe navigable rivers and streams. 

Historically, "ingots" were thin sheets shaped like animal hide laid flat and maybe as wide as a man's chest and weighing maybe 5+/- kg. They'd be easy to bind together and pack out on foot.

Ingots like this have been found in ship wrecks and they were probably laid in the bottom of the hull replacing ballast stones. 

I agree Hancook puffed his papers to be more impressive or he wasn't as good a scientist as he supposed. Then again maybe it's institutional tradition or just human nature. I still see a lot of conclusions drawn from minimal evidence or pure fantasy. Oh, come ON how hard is it to imagine half a BILLION TONS of copper disappearing? Michigan Copper has been found all over the new world and humans are busy little beavers if there's valuables to trade. 

Not that I ever exaggerate of course. 

There is also some good evidence showing a majority of American natives crossed the Atlantic from western Europe around the Solutrean rather than the Aleutian land bridge. Stone points from the Solutrean bear an uncanny resemblance to early Fulsome and Clovis points dating within a few hundred years. There are even some earlier points along the east coast that are essentially identical. 

The time frame for the older finds is around end of the ice age about 15,500 BP. Navigating across the Atlantic would be a matter of following the edge of the ice sheet. They would have solid camping "ground" and the good food source of the ocean.

Quite a few of the modern knappers have done a lot of research and make pretty compelling arguments for the actual migration of humans as opposed to the old school land bridge theories.

The tie in being, people have been navigating the Atlantic to N. AM. for thousands of years before the metallics age of mankind.

Mining, refining and transporting copper to the old world doesn't feel like a stretch at all.

Of course those are just my thoughts, I could be wrong.

Frosty The Lucky

 

[George N. M.]

For me one of the compelling pieces of non-evidence is that as far as I know not one ox hide shaped ingot has been found on this side of the Atlantic.

Also, I believe that all the Old Copper Culture artifacts were made by cold hammering (and annealling) rather than by casting which would have probably been picked up if Old World folk were reworking native copper into ingots for transport.

Yes, some early trans-Atlantic contact seems probable but I need convincing for large scale movement back and forth.

GNM 

[BillyBones]

I asked the Captain and he did not really answer more than saying he was a young ships hand carrying copper ingots back then. He retired a few years ago the Capt. never fails with a yarn of the high seas and the adventures he had.

May i introduce Capt. Krinklebein.

My wife used to work in a thrift store and this showed up one day. I immediately had to have it. When my daughter was little i used to put it next to her while she slept so she would wake you to see it, or out side the bathroom waiting for her to come out, just always somewhere where it was like it was following her. Kind of like a creepy elf on the shelf. 

[Daswulf]

That's funny Billy.  

I have a couple creepy old bobbleheads. I'll have to try to remember to get some pictures tonight. 

[Scott NC]

  Thanks, Direwolf.  Facinating, and it led to some interesting comments, reading and rat holes, I had to stop at paleostreams.  I pick it up later... 

  Great Neptunes Beard.  Billy that is going in my "Future Sculpture Idea" files.  I have a carved coconut shell pirate head that I got in the carribean that may give it a run for it's money in creepiness.  This is all great fun.

[Frosty]

GADS Billy, I'm not sure if that makes me want one next to my chair or run away and hide in a bathroom. Somewhere else!

Actually I'm pretty sure I would've bought it too. Sort of reminds me of a character out of Scrooge, maybe out of a Tolkien story.

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

Hancock is a joke. Almost nothing that he claims stands up to any degree of academic rigor, and every time any serious archaeologist presents evidence and scholarship to debunk his pseudoarchaeological speculations, he starts whining about how The Establishment can't handle criticism or challenges to established wisdom. He's a good writer and superficially persuasive, but that's as far as it goes. Carl Sagan's maxim "Extraordinary claims require ordinary evidence" is most appropriate, and George's skepticism is well founded and well articulated.

[Frosty]

He didn't even present evidence, just opinion and conclusions. I thought I called bull on his opinions for same. I might have worded it poorly.

What makes me think there was a trans-Atlantic trade in copper is the spectrographic evidence found in ancient copper and bronze artefacts in Europe and N. Africa. 

Unfortunately I couldn't find a cite, the web isn't as useful as it was before marketers almost took it over completely. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

Google Scholar is generally a good place to look, although even there, one has to be very careful to look further into the actual articles and citations. For example, the two most promising hits on "transatlantic copper trade precolumbian" were both from the "Journal of Scientific Exploration", which exists primarily to promote fringe theories about UFOs, pseudoarchaeology, and the like. I clicked on one of them, and the fact that the first few pages were dedicated to excoriating mainstream archaeology for insisting on evidence was revealing, to say the least.

[BillyBones]

One thing i can not stand about the "alien tech" people is that they take away so much from human ingenuity. Human beings are capable of great things. It does not take a rocket surgeon to figure out how to stack 2 rocks on top of each other or that a pyramid is the most stable of structures. 

[Frosty]

Hey, I have friends who sat in the backroom of the coffee shop discussing alien tech and the gubmint conspiracies to keep the TRUTH from us!  One of them Cruz was a very good coffee shop friend and the person who gave me the documents that lead to the T burner. I don't know if he believed any of the aluminum foil beany crowd's "theories" or just liked the table talk. 

The conclusion I came to when Dad and I used to have coffee and listen to the "counter culture" (Counter being the counter at the cafe) guys talk about such is that it is WAY easier to believe a mystery than crack a book and find out what's really happening. 

I'm not sure about the apparent need to have superior beings uplifting humanity other than the deities we observe "normally" but . . . IIRC there were photos in an Egyptology book of "drawings" of methods of moving large stone blocks. My favorite were the 4 wooden slabs, flat side the same dimension of the stone blocks in that pyramid, the other side being round 1/4 the circumference of a cylinder the size of the block and with matching grooves. Ropes fit the grooves and tied the slabs to the blocks making it relatively easy to roll. That was until the ramps started steepening and a rolling block that got loose would make jelly of slaves, etc. in it's path to a low spot. 

Anyway I don't see anything about the great constructions ancient humans built that couldn't be done with basic solid geometry, surveyor's tools, hammers, levers and lots of laborers. 

I do beg to differ about a pyramid being the most stable of structures and submit the Plaza for your consideration. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[BillyBones]

Ok, got me on the plaza thing. I should have said "one of" the most stable structures. 

I love a good conspiracy theory though, even the tin foil hat brigade and the crazy haired guy that is always on TV. From big foot to ancient aliens, flat earthers to moon landing deniers, quite entertaining. There was a web site that i loved going to and reading about the but since 2016 it has all become politics there.  That will ruin a good website in a heart beat in my opinion. If i want to read politics i will go to a political site or if i want religion a religious site. 

[Daswulf]

I like guys like Randal Carlson  with kosmagraphia and Ben from UnchartedX they show evidence, have some theories but admit that we just don't know. 

It is truly interesting and fun to think about. Sometimes even with the wild ideas of aliens or ancient more technologically advanced peoples, it is at least fun to think about. I don't really get hung up on anything unless someone making money on their theory says that this or that is the only way it was done. 

I haven't read Grahm Hancocks books but hearing a lot of what he has to say is interesting, and again, have heard him say honestly that we just don't know. 

 

[Frosty]

Nah, that was a gimme, I knew what you meant and you're right, I just can't help my self.

I'm afraid I burned out on conspiracies a long time ago. Especially deliberately scripted guys like the wild haired individual you reference. To much of his . . . opinion is written just for the show.

"No accounting for taste said the old lady as she kissed the cow," was one of my Grandmother's favorite sayings.

I fully agree about the fate of most anything that devolves into politics. Many years ago my favorite email list, "artmetal dot list" changed list Mom and he decided no subject was off limits. The membership went from 500+ subscribers to about 40 in a couple weeks. Any opposing opinion got gang flamed till all there was is "ditto think."

I learned to read because Mother introduced me to science fiction so I can suspend my disbelief for any plausible McGuffin but some of them . . . 

I love some pretty out there material, I read all of Von Daniken's books years ago as well as others. Fun stuff.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Ted Ewert]

I'm a veteran rabbit hole adventurer. I've got a whole library on paranormal phenomena. If it's weird or unusual, I've researched it.

It started back when I was a teenager and watched a UFO fly over a buddy and me one night. It was a classic disc-shaped craft that went from a light yellow on the top to a deep orange on the bottom. We watched it fly from north to south for about 5 seconds then disappear into a fogbank.

The ridicule and disbelief from my family and friends taught me a few things. The main lesson being that most people refuse to think outside of societal norms. Anything that doesn't fit into their comfortable worldview becomes an "extraordinary claim" requiring "extraordinary proof."  

I don't think that way. I rate things on a scale of probability, not if it's true or untrue. 

Take Bigfoot for example. I've never seen one but I've read credible books and listened to hundreds of eyewitness accounts of these creatures. They all describe the same large, hairy, bipedal creature. Many have physical evidence to back up their claims. They all describe similar behavior and other traits associated with this creature. These testimonies come from a wide range of individuals including police officers, firefighters, judges, geologists, soldiers, and many other reliable sources.

The evidence is overwhelming to anyone who doesn't dismiss the whole phenomenon out of hand as a crazy, tinfoil-hat "conspiracy theory."  I would rate Bigfoot's existence as extremely probable.

Having an open mind is not always synonymous with being a gullible idiot. If you wait for academia, the government, or the "experts" to tell you what to believe, your knowledge of the world will be extremely limited. Using your own intelligence, logic, and common sense to explore the fringes of our knowledge is far more fun and rewarding. 

[Frosty]

If you were living in or near Mill Valley when you saw whatever you saw, it could well have been an experimental vehicle. Technically anything flying you can't ID is a UFO, say a Cessna at 5 miles. 

I see we're of two different camps, I'm more of a skeptic, Carl Sagan's statement, "Extraordinary claims require Extraordinary evidence." I don't require "proof" but I do require good evidence. I've listened to too much anecdotal stuff to call it evidence. Clues to research maybe but rarely good evidence. I have too much experience with how shadows can look just like something moving in moonlit, winter woods when it's the observer's changing position and different shadows creating the illusion. Predisposition to believing such is a multiplier. 

I consider the extraordinary potentially believable when I can not find holes in the evidence and most popular stuff looks like a screen door. The universe if full of genuinely interesting hard to describe let alone explain or understand things, the popular amusements are not so much.

Like fun? Try this. https://www.the-whiteboard.com/

It's a safe site, Jer.

[George N. M.]

I'm skeptical of bigfoot because of the lack of physical evidence, a critter hit by a vehicle, bodies, scat, fossils, etc..  Also, particularly in the coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest there does not seem to be as much opportunity to feed a large omnivorous primate as in a more temperate climate.  Even if it was a dietary analog to a bear it would leave more signs of its existance and give more opportunities for hard evidence such as photos and videos.

And it is hard to assign levels of credibility to sighting reports.  Some are going to have a high confidence level but a lot are going to be mistaken, seeing what the person wants or is predisposed to see, and just plain old frauds and pranks.

Is it possible that there is a large undiscovered primate out there with a large enough breeding population to keep the species going?  Yes.  Is it probable?  IMO, no or at least a pretty low probability.

I agree with Frosty and Carl Sagan that the more fantastic/improbable the claim the more evidence you need to support it.  As an attorney I am well aware of the need for evidence.  To prevail in different sorts of legal actions you need different levels of evidence.  In a plain old civil case, e.g. a contract dispute, you only need a prepondance of the evidence (aka the 51% rule), in certain cases you need "clear and convincing" evidence, and in criminal trials you need to disprove the presumption of innocence by "beyond a reasonable doubt" evidence.  I would need at least "clear and convicing" evidence to think there is a high probability of the existence of a previously unknown large primate species.

BTW, Frosty, The Whiteboard is one of the first things I read when I turn my computer on in the morning and have for the last 15 years or so.

GNM

[BillyBones]

Maybe Bigfoot, like the Loch Ness Monster, it the ghost of a prehistoric creature and that is why there is no remains, scat, or other such things. 

I used to watch Mountain Monsters all the time. I rolled laughing when they built the giant bug zapper to trap Mothman. 

I know for a fact that aliens exist. My grandpa worked at Wright Patterson AFB, he told me and all my freinds when i was a wee lad that it was his job to feed the aliens in hanger 18. (by the way if any one does not know, there is no hanger 18 or ever has been.) 

On a serious note i will not say it is proof positive of alien "life" but i had an uncle that was a research scientist for the federal gov't. Back in the 80's he was doing research on some sort of single celled amoeba like thing they found on a craft that had returned from space. I never did find out if it was something they took with them or brought back.  

I am a pretty opened minded person but i usualy go with the simplest explanation is usually the right explanation. 

[Frosty]

I don't open the Whiteboard till evening or I'd never get anything done online. Are you reading his current panels, or hanging back out of the subscription zone? 

I was going to skip around and find where I left off but as soon as I opened one I started following the thread. One of these days I'll be in Homer and get a chance to stop in for a howdy. I'd really like to meet some of the employees or friends his characters are based on. 

There isn't even decent let alone good circumstantial evidence for a bigfoot. There's nothing wrong with circumstantial evidence, after all the house across the street is circumstantial evidence it was built. Cave paintings are circumstantial evidence for human habitation, especially the hand tracings. But laughably physiologically incorrect plaster "footprint" casts or any of it. 

Ah I have to get off this topic, it goes nowhere. Show me a body, fossils, something real.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Daswulf]

The bobbleheads. Sorry for not cleaning the soot off of them but they hang out and do their thing.